I was up for no good reason last night lying wide awake in bed when it occurred to me how loud our life will soon become. Now, that’s okay with me — but what about my neighbors?

I’ve dealt with noisy neighbors for years. For the four years, I’ve lived below stompers, who like to trek back and forth in their apartments for hours, it seems, at a time. I’m sorry — what are you doing making laps at 11pm?

I’ve also lived in a space where I was surrounded by noise on all four sides: Stompy up above, grumpy old man yeller on the right, loud young foreign guys on the right and video game man below. It’s all SO annoying! So of course I was nervous moving here to a new apartment.

I will be the noisy neighbor 🙁

However, now I’m going to to be the annoying noisy neighbor — and I cringe at being so. I’m SO worried about bothering the people below and beside us (we are on the top floor). I just Googled how to handle a newborn in an apartment and they only thing I got back was, “Your neighbors just have to deal with it, no one can kick you out because of it.”

Yes, I know that. However, I HATE being irritating and do not want my neighbors to hate me. I’m considering walking downstairs to introduce myself and let them know I am conscience of the new noise that will soon arrive — and will do my best but…there’s not a lot that can be done.

I was driven to the point of insanity by the people in my last apartment, who would wake me up at 2am when they came in stomping around. It made me a very angry person! I hate the thought of doing that to someone else…but I guess I don’t have a choice.

I am planning to just pray that I can keep my personal noise down (by not walking loudly or talking loudly) and hope the crying doesn’t peak at deafening levels. I know this isn’t what I should be stressing about, but I can’t help it after having had such miserable times from other people’s noise in the past…

If anyone out there has ever dealt with this situation and has any suggestions…I’ll take ’em…